I Don’t Want to be a Pessimist Anymore

The dismantling of USAID and PEPFAR, the drastic NIH funding cuts, the gutting of the CDC, and an administration that sees no value in the lives of those who are different from them. These things bring me, and many others, nothing but fear and anger. They are killing people, decimating communities, and harming the people we love. The effects are immediate and immediately destructive. 

 

But, at the same time, I am tired of looking into the future and seeing only bad. I believe we can turn this into an opportunity–an opportunity to rebuild a flawed system. Our global health frameworks are being broken down brick by brick by the current administration, but their inability to persevere in the midst of an extreme political atmosphere indicates an inherent flaw, a flaw that defines what these programs are. They were intentionally developed to be “band-aid” solutions that rely on health disparities around the world. They cover up the wound so that, temporarily, it won’t get infected, but when you pull that band-aid off, the infection gets worse. That wound never really heals and you get sepsis and die. 

 

I say this while simultaneously supporting what these programs are doing for global health crises. My issue with these programs, primarily, is that they focus only on fixing the immediate burden and fail to fix the underlying, deeper issues, like weak and failing health systems, which makes them, and the recipient communities of this funding, extremely susceptible to political shifts. That being said, you cannot build comprehensive health systems to be more resilient when there aren’t enough healthy people to staff health facilities or half the population is in a critical condition because they have no access to treatment due to funding cuts. You still need the band-aid. The vitality of the bandage coexists with the importance of nurturing your wound, applying antiseptic, replacing the old band-aid with a clean one, and monitoring the wound to make sure it has healed. 

 

And now, we are back to ground zero. Recipients of this funding still have underfunded, overburdened, and ineffective health systems and are concurrently getting their life-saving treatment immediately stripped away from them. However, I believe that this regression offers us a chance to be constructively critical about these programs with the intention of using that to rebuild an even more effective, resilient, and sustainable system that can withstand unexpected political hurdles. 

 

That means we have to act now. We cannot use this opportunity to reconstruct our approach to global health as an excuse not to act. We, the youth of today and the leaders of tomorrow, will be the ones to rebuild our future, transforming these devastating and destructive realities into something hopeful, resilient, and new.